"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Friday, January 24, 2020

Thomas Hutchinson



This portrait of historian, businessman, and politician, Thomas Hutchinson (September 9, 1711 – June 3, 1780)   is on loan to the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC from the Massachusetts Historical Society. The NMAH label says it's by an unknown artist after the 1741 portrait by Edward Truman.
Thomas Hutchinson, portrayed here as a young man, served as governor of Massachusetts from 1771 to 1774. Appointed by the King, royal governors pursued policies favored by the British ministry. They enjoyed power to appoint officials to execute the law, …. Yet many governors saw colonial governments as dangerously out of balance, with no hereditary aristocracy to support executive authority and too much power concentrated in the hands of the elected assembly. Hutchinson worried that popular power, or “the rule of the multitude,” would bring anarchy and dictatorship to the colonies. -- NMAH
The 1741 Edward Truman portrait of Thomas Hutchinson, mentioned above, also belongs to the Massachusetts Historical Society. This photo of it is available from Wikipedia.


Peter Orlando Hutchinson in his 1884 book Diary and letters of his Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq. B.A. (Harvard) LL.D. (Oxon.) Vol. 1, says that:
The original painting is said to have been injured with swords, bayonets, and sticks, when the soldiers and the people got free entrance into his country house at Milton; but it was afterwards repaired, and is now in the rooms of the Historical Society of Massachusetts.
In Vol. 2 of his book Hutchinson includes this photo by Notman of what appears to be the painting that's currently on loan to the Smithsonian, but he attributes it to Copley (Copley pinx.)


Granger similarly attributes this painting to John Singleton Copley. You can get it on a tote-bag for $44.50.

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